Adobe tonight announced an Office Suite largely focused around a new version of Acrobat. TechCrunch has a good post on the new stuff that just shipped.

Look at what Eric Rice just told us: “I just went to http://Acrobat.com and played with Adobe’s online office suite. Holy crap. That ConnectNow is the greatest thing I’ve ever seen.”

Or, look at what Jim Stanger just said “Yep! Folks at the office are gonna like this, no doubt. I love it when these services help me be the Big Damn Hero!”

This is an important announcement, but don’t miss the bigger thing that’s going on.

The way we all work together is seeing HUGE changes and the changes are coming from all over, not from one place or once company the way that the changes did in the 1980s where stuff designed at Xerox PARC became the Macintosh and Microsoft Word (that was designed at Xerox, go back and look it up). In the 1990s the world of work was controlled largely by Microsoft after its Office Suite became THE WAY we all worked together (and still largely is).

But the changes that are going on now?

Well, for that, you have to try some of the stuff on the Office 2.0 database or you have to see how the workplace itself is changing thanks to movements like coworking. Not to mention that mobile devices are making work much different. Everytime a plane I’m on lands I see that revolution up front and close as people switch on iPhones and Blackberries to get back in touch with their coworkers. Real-time web services like Twitter, Facebook, Plaxo, Pownce, Jaiku, and LinkedIn are having even other changes on how we work.

My email is showing me that, for many of you, these changes have already happened. But when I look at what people are doing in airports I see that most business people have no clue about any of these changes. For them we’re living in the future and they don’t even know it yet.

Soon people just won’t put up with a Word Processor that costs hundreds of dollars and isn’t collaborative. They won’t put up with a presentation program that can’t deal with photos from Flickr. They won’t handle a sales database that doesn’t run in the Web browser.

So, congratulations Adobe for pushing us further into this new world of work. What a week this will be.

More on this topic on Thursday when we start a new show on the future of work on FastCompany.tv. Who is the first guest? The guy who runs the PARC lab today for Xerox. Who is the second guest? The guy who does the Office 2.0 database linked to above. And you.

Can improve the world.

I was sworn to secrecy about what we were doing in Paris last December. You thought I was there to attend and speak at the LeWeb conference. I was. But we also were testing out Dave Sifry’s new business idea, which he now calls Offbeat Guides. Several people have blogged about them overnight. TechCrunch has a further writeup about the guides.

So, what is it? It’s a paper book. Horrors! Paper? Travel guides? How old school. Heheh.

But, from the moment I saw it I wanted it. Why? It was a paper guide customized to Dave’s agenda. His hotel was right on the cover. Inside everything he needed to know was there. His schedule. The restaurants within walking distance of his hotel (and other ones he wanted to visit). Weather. Transit stations. A list of cool tourist destinations we wanted to get to, and info that he needed to know about them. (When we tested his guide out we were standing in front of the Louvre in Paris).

Even things like key phrases in the language of the region (good for finding a bathroom, or buying a beer), plus exchange rates, tipping guides, that kind of thing.

But why are these so great? Because they are up to date to when you actually travel.

Think about if you are in San Francisco this afternoon as a tourist. Your regular tourist guide has no idea what’s on http://Upcoming.org, but imagine you are right now looking for something fun to do and you’ve already been to Alcatraz and the Golden Gate Bridge. Why not come to the Cupcake Camp this afternoon? If you had Offbeat Guides, you’d have your favorite events listed inside.

I travel a lot and this kind of guide is very helpful. Why paper? It’s a good backup. I have all my travel information stuck inside my computer, but what if my computer dies, or is stolen, or has a dead battery? Plus, I don’t always want to carry my geek devices everywhere, particularly when I’m on vacation and trying to get away from it all.

Brilliant idea. Can’t wait to use it on my next major trip to an unfamiliar place (which will be to Washington DC on June 22).

Thanks Dave for giving me an early look last December. In the photo that I shot in Paris’ shopping district that’s Dave Sifry with Doc Searls (co-author of the Cluetrain Manifesto) and Christian Lindholm (one of the key guys behind the Nokia Series 60 phone). Our little tour was a lot more fun thanks to Dave’s new idea.

This is a good point that Google’s new App Engine underprices Amazon’s Simple DB by 10 x.

Google is making moves and these are not to be missed.

UPDATE: TechCrunch is reporting that Google is shipping some new geolocation services that he thinks are a big deal.

UPDATE2: We’re discussing the pricing over on FriendFeed where someone points out that the comparison isn’t exactly fair.

UPDATE3: yesterday Google announced a health data API. I think this could be bigger than any of the other stuff we’re talking about today.

I almost did a Mike Arrington headline, like the one he used recently against Wired magazine, when he was frustrated that they were calling him out. It would have been so satisfying. But, I decided to play it straight. At least here. Over on FriendFeed I let my full fury out.

What happened? Well, you can see the headlines over on TechMeme. Twitter blamed its “popular” users for its woes. Now, who could that be? Right. Venture Beat filled in the blank, if you just weren’t sure.

A business that blames its best users is one that’s in trouble. Serious trouble.

It’s so sad to watch a business make so many bad decisions like this one is doing. Right now a pretty significant part of Twitter is down. Track isn’t on. IM isn’t on. Other parts of the service are giving me tons of whale photos that say something is technically wrong. It’s so sad because I really want to use this service to keep in touch with my friends and fans and family and enemies and all that. They all were on Twitter. Now? On FriendFeed alone I now have 11,566 followers (a large percentage of which joined in past two weeks). There is a migration underway, although most people say “I really want to be on Twitter” even after trying out competitive services like Pownce, FriendFeed, and Jaiku.

Please Twitter: fix your darn problems and stop blaming your users. You now have $15,000,000 in venture. You have no excuses anymore.

Thanks to gapingvoid.com for the cartoon.

We’re discussing Jaiku vs. Twitter. Where else? On FriendFeed. Interesting discussion.

OK, so tonight Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer showed off a tiny piece of Windows 7: that multi-touch capabilities will be built into the OS. Tons of info on this over on TechMeme.

Of course, viewers here last week had a lengthy discussion and demo with the guy who invented these features inside Microsoft Research.

Why aren’t they leading with Microsoft’s Live Mesh? Easy, multi-touch is sexy and easy to demo, even if they won’t really increase sales of WIndows that much. Why do I say that? Remember back in 2002/2003? I was really excited by the Tablet PC functionality. That never really increased sales much because it solved a problem people really didn’t have. Same with the multi-touch stuff. How many of you really need these features? They’d be nice to have to show off to your friends, but after that show off factor is gone, do they really improve your life? Microsoft so far hasn’t shown us how these features really go beyond a cool demo.

And, anyway, where do we need these kinds of features? Not really on a laptop where we have a mouse or trackpad, but we need these things on mobile phones where we’ll be using the things while standing up. The iPhone showed us that.

So, now what? Watch three things:

1. Google’s Android. That’s aimed at the new sweet spot in the industry where growth is rapidly going.
2. Microsoft’s Live Mesh. Ray Ozzie’s system is getting attention as a developer platform that’ll keep Windows relevant even as much of the world moves toward an online cloud-based world.
3. Apple’s iPhone and a secret device that’s been spotted in their labs. An Apple employee I know told me about a new looking small PC device inside Apple’s labs.

Anyway, this all doesn’t matter, although all the bloggers in the world love this cause it brings page views and gives us something new to talk about other than whether or not Twitter is up or down. So, forgive me if I’m going back to sleep.

I received this letter the other day and have been thinking about it a lot.

From: Bob Bly
Sent: Mon 5/19/2008 4:41 PM
To: rscoble@fastcompany.com
Subject: Question from a reader

As a Fast Company subscriber, I occasionally read, with much bewilderment, your column.

What bewilders me is why you are excited about the things you write about.

I am not being facetious but ask the question respectfully — and I hope you might write a column to answer it.

I can’t understand why anyone would bother with or get excited about all the Internet and electronic stuff you talk about.

It seems to me that all these things — Twitter, Facebook, iPhone, Flickr — are a thundering bore and an utter waste of time.

I don’t have any of it — for that matter, I don’t own a Blackberry, iPod, wireless laptop, or even a cell phone — and I get along fine without them.

In fact, I’d say my productivity is greatly enhanced by not fooling with all these useless gadgets or reading the endless blather on social networking sites.

Can you help an old guy from the old school understand what he’s missing?

P.S. Your column is well written and there are obviously a legion of people who get all this stuff. I’d like to see if I could become one of them or at least understand what all the fuss is about.

Bob Bly
Copywriter / Consultant
http://www.bly.com

Ahh, we have a productivity problem!

Whenever I am faced with a productivity problem I ask myself “what do I want to get out of life?”

The answer to that question usually guides whether or not I’m doing the right thing. Er, the most productive thing.

Lately I’ve been asking myself a lot of similar questions that Bob has been asking me.

“Is it better to just take the night off and watch some TV instead of trying out that new Windows Mobile Smart Phone that arrived?”

“Is it better to change Milan’s diapers or answer another email?”

“Is it better to go have a nice glass of wine down at the Ritz or open up Twitter to see if it’s up again?”

“Should I start reviewing some Facebook applications or should I go for a walk?”

But I’m just being silly. The real thing I’ve been doing for more than eight years now is to try to arrange my life so that I have an interesting conversation every day with someone interesting.

A great many of those conversations have happened because of something I wrote here, or a community I participated in.

But why use all these things? Well, they help me start conversations with other people. Look at the photo above. I shot that on a little walk I did yesterday afternoon with my newfangled cell phone that lets me post that photo automatically from my cell phone to Flickr so you all can see it within seconds of me shooting that. I was thinking about my place in life and community. The Golden Gate National Cemetery is a powerful place to visit to do just that and to think about questions like the one that Bob poses here.

Why do I want to keep up with Flickr? Well, Flickr is how I share that photo with all of you, which, by the way was shot with a new cell phone that I’m testing from Nokia (the N82). Why do I want to use Twitter? Well, that’s how I keep up with the Mars Lander that’s sending back some interesting data that have scientists very excited this week. Why do I want to use FriendFeed? That’s how I study how early adopters are reacting to a number of interesting tools and services, not to mention the news of the day. Here’s a comment cluster there talking about Freshbooks and whether or not that’s any good.

Why do I like Qik? Because that’s where I can watch a Congressman, John Culberson, who put live video of what he was experiencing as the Mars Lander started sending photos on Sunday afternoon. Magical.

Yes, I do have a productivity problem. There’s too much interesting stuff to participate in on FriendFeed. Here’s a page that shows every single FriendFeed item that I’ve either “liked” or “commented” on. Warning, that’s thousands of things. You have been warned, a lot of my productivity has been spent doing that for you.

Facebook? Where else can I learn that Jim Long, NBC Cameraman who covers the President at the White House was born 18 days before me? (Seriously, I just learned that by looking him up on Facebook). Seriously, though, I have 8,000 business cards from all sorts of people like Jim, but I go to Facebook to see if I can find their email address or phone number before going through my large rolodex. Jim Long is on Twitter and one of its most active members, by the way.

DAMN IT SCOBLE ANSWER BOB’S QUESTION

OK, OK, I see that a few of you are interested in how I’d answer Rob’s question straight up. My answer:

“There is value in staying ignorant.”

Seriously. Think of the tradeoff to staying ignorant. You might have to go to school to learn something new instead of grabbing another beer out of the fridge and sitting on the couch and watching another CSI, like I did last night. Hey, sitting on the couch with your baby and your wife and drinking a beer while watching TV is a lot of fun, but it gets back to the question I ask myself often: “what do I want to get out of life?”

Hint: sitting on a couch and drinking beer isn’t going to help me get to my goal.

For ME playing with the latest social network, the latest cell phone, the latest laptop, etc will help me get to my goal.

Now, if your goal is different than mine, you’ll want to use your own tactics.

But let’s say you aren’t into the latest technology, but, rather, are a dress maker. Well, then you probably won’t care one bit about the latest cell phones, or whether you’ve gotten poked on Facebook today or not, but you probably will want to check out BurdaStyle, where they practice open source sewing.

If you want to be productive, focus your efforts on getting to where you want to go.

Bob, you say you are a copywriter. Now, I used to be one of those too. Worked at a magazine back in the 1990s and edited and wrote and all that — even did advertising copy for our advertisers. I used to use Microsoft Word. Are you still using a typewriter? Back in the 1970s, that was the tool of the trade. Then it switched to PCs and Word. Why? Because new kids like me came along and were able to do more with less. Why? I could write and edit far faster than anyone with a typewriter could (despite their protestations — I had proof on my side and, anyway, the new employers who were hiring wanted copy sent in digitally to lay out with Aldus’ Pagemaker, which I also learned how to use, and anyone who was sticking with typewriters caused another step to be inserted where errors could creep into copy).

Today I’d say the skill set is shifting once again. This time to something like Zoho Writer or Google’s Docs. Because if you visit Fast Company’s offices in New York, for instance, they want to work with you on your copy in live time. Fast Fast Fast is the word of the day. It’s in our title, after all. Now some people still use Word, but last time I was there one of the editors told me he was moving everything over to Google’s Docs because it let him work with his authors much more effectively.

And learning something new does seem to get you kudos, promotions, and all that. When I visited the New York Times last week I noticed that the executives there weren’t proud of people who did things the same old way, but rather were proudest of the people who were trying to do things a new way. Hey, how about putting the New York Times news on top of Google Earth? I bet that team gets considered first when raises come around.

But, like I said, I have a productivity problem. I spend too much time playing with all this stuff. So, later today, I’m going to interview the CEO of Dogster. What’s that? Oh, yeah, a social network for dog owners. My productivity is going to the dogs this afternoon. I think I’ll bring my newfangled cell phone and show you some video of the offices at about 1 p.m.

I have Bob Bly to blame for finally realizing that I’ve been so unproductive lately. He taught me that I could get ahead in life by staying ignorant of it all. Maryam, can you bring me another beer please?

Another way to close this post? Sorry to impede on your productivity, but how would you answer Bob’s letter?

UPDATE: We’re discussing this post over on FriendFeed.

UPDATE2: Is Bob Bly pulling our leg? Read this comment by BlogHer founder Elisa: “A little historical context here: In late 2004 Bob Bly famously wrote a newsletter dissing the potential of blogging as a marketing & communications tool, mocking it, some would say. Great link bait and blog fodder. He then, surprise surprise, started a blog himself. Talk about built-in attention & controversy. Funny thing, he maintains that blog pretty actively to this day. I’d say he’s planning to get on Facebook, Twitter etc. in about 2 weeks & just wants to make sure people are paying attention ;)” - Elisa Camahort Page

No Mars on TechMeme tonight. Really.

But some stupid one-word Twitter post made it on? Really.

So, excuse me if I say FriendFeed!

UPDATE: Just arrived from Mars, first color image! And another one. Awesome.

UPDATE2: Wired Science has a great blog post on the Mars stuff today.

Brian Solis just wrote a guest post for TechCrunch in which he gave away many of the secrets of the PR industry. Every entrepreneur and even every product manager inside a big company should read it and understand the tactics discussed there. Don’t miss the additional video by Seesmic’s CEO/founder, Loic Le Meur in that same post’s comments. Loic is the best at this in the business.

While I was writing this post Loic Le Meur wrote a new blog post calling “bulls++t” on Brian’s post. You should read that as well and that started an interesting discussion on FriendFeed.

But Brian didn’t give away his real secret sauce: how does he get bloggers and journalists to write about the stuff he’s representing? I’ve known Brian for quite a while and here’s some of his secrets that I didn’t see him disclose on TechCrunch:

1. PR now stands for “Professional Relationships.” How can I tell a good PR person (like Brian) vs. a bad one (who sends me emails about stuff I’d never write about)? Easy: Brian builds relationships with me and every other blogger. He takes our pictures. He always welcomes us by name and with a smile (and often a hug, if he knows you well). He doesn’t just do this for the A-listers, either. I’ve watched him at parties and he always introduces me to someone I’ve never heard of before.

2. The new PR is about creating visually-rich experiences. Why? Because more and more bloggers and journalists are being forced to use cameras and video. Look at Kara Swisher. She carries her video camera everywhere. When I met the publisher of the Washington Post he said more and more of his journalists are carrying video cameras. So, no longer is it appropriate to show off a PowerPoint presentation. A simple demo works far better and the best PR people come ready with a USB key full of screen captures and stuff.

3. You don’t need PR at all if you have a great product. Remember how I found out about Qik.com? I was hanging out with Dave Winer and my son in an Apple store. A friend of the company (a beta tester) recognized me and said “you’re going to want to see this.” I was amazed and wrote a blog post WHILE IN THE STORE. Then my next item was to beg to get added to the beta, which they did and now I’ve done more than 700 videos with my cell phone and gotten more than 450,000 visits. I later learned that they weren’t ready for all this PR (they didn’t even have an official PR firm back then) but stayed up for two nights straight to get ready for all the people who were asking for access. I credit Michael Forston, lead developer for building a great community in those early days. Note how he’s on Twitter and keeping in touch with everyone even today.

4. You gotta go meet bloggers, journalists, and influentials. Often. Early. They won’t come to you, you’ve gotta go to them. Watch Upcoming.org’s tech event calendar and see where they’ll be (at least that’s where the tech bloggers/influentials/journalists will be) and go there and make sure you meet them and make a good impression. Lines that work on me? “I got something that might make you cry” or “if you think FriendFeed is cool, wait until you see this.” Using lines like these demonstrate you know a little bit about my blog and are looking to only bring me really impressive stuff. Be ready for me to turn on my Qik camera, though. I want to capture that first demo if it really is great. I remember when Stewart Butterfield, founder of the company that made Flickr, first showed it to me in the hallway at Tim O’Reilly’s Emerging Technology conference. Magical demo that still makes an impact on me when I think back on it and that was, what, five years ago now?

5. If you have a magical experience, invite influentials to share in. Laurent Haig invites me every year to his friend’s chalet in the Swiss mountains. A couple of years ago that led to a demo while sitting around drinking wine (he didn’t ask PR permission, which got him in a bit of trouble as they got nearly 100,000 requests in the next 24 hours, thanks to tons of blogging, including a post on TechCrunch. No PR people were involved, just an entrepreneur who understood the value of creating a fun experience for people who could tell other people about his product and company. Heck, he told me later he didn’t even have plans to show us CoComment and that it was a reward for speaking at his conference. That’ll teach Laurent a lesson about having some wine while hanging out with bloggers for a weekend. That said, Laurent is a guy I’d do anything for and this fall I’m going to Korea to help him with his conference there.

6. Create touch-points for influentials. Brian and other companies and PR professionals in the industry (including me and others at Fast Company) create events that attract bloggers and journalists and other influentials. We are creating another “social media event” at next year’s Consumer Electronics Show to do exactly that. How do you get bloggers to show up? Have famous bloggers like Kevin Rose, Leo Laporte, Ryan Block, Tim Ferriss, Scott Beale, etc show up. Give them a fun event, like a wine party, make sure there’s lots of bandwidth, wifi, etc., there. And now watch what happens. I bet someone will write about, photo, or video, your event like Scott Beale did.

7. But really, this only matters if you have a great product that people want to tell other people about. If Ansel Adams wasn’t the best landscape photographer that ever lived, would it have mattered that we got an invite to Yosemite? No. Gotta have the goods which will tell the story on their own.

How do you get people to cover your company’s products?

Added bonus: BusinessWeek just wrote about what has been happening in online content beyond blogs.